Maxwell Street Blues (16 page)

“I don’t know anything about the murder. And I had no impression Tate knew anything, either.”

“He was threatening to ruin you!”

“He was just the messenger! The others are using him as a shield. He’s in too deep to refuse.” That explained why Anna Piantowski would continue working for Tate while her lover was being blackmailed.

“The
others
being Mildish and Baron?”

“I told you Snooky never used names. Tate approached me about the photos and begged me to change my vote. For my own good, he wouldn’t tell me who was behind it all. He had real fear in his eyes.”

“Did Snooky know about this?”

“I never said a word to him. I realize now he may have been killed because of our friendship. They couldn’t risk retribution if he found out I was being blackmailed. He knew everything, after all. He kept the books.” Conway pushed a tear off her cheek.

Had Snooky been a hack bookkeeper, I might’ve believed he was killed to cover tracks. But he had spent over twenty years gaining the trust of bookies, loan sharks, gamblers, and a generic assortment of other lowlife hoods who lived on the fringes. These were
his
people. He knew the game and the consequences of breaking the rules—Snooky didn’t have a death wish.

I told Linda Conway I was convinced her friendship with Snooky had nothing to do with his murder, and she seemed to appreciate my words, although I doubted we would have lunch together anytime soon.

37

The phone rang at three
A.M.
“Your dad asked me if Voss was holdin’ somethin’ over your head,” Frownie said.

“You couldn’t have held on to this breaking news until seven or eight?”

“Voss can’t wait. I gotta know. Does that cocksucker got somethin’ on you?”

“What the hell could he have? And don’t you think I would’ve told you about it?”

“I don’t know what to think. Your first murder case and I’m thinkin’ you see it all as a game. Well, let me tell you, it ain’t no game.”

“Frownie, you’re overreacting.”

“Yeah, sure. You know everything, Julie. But actually, you don’t know shit.” He hung up. Thanks, Frownie.

I couldn’t get back to sleep. I sat in the living room and studied the streetlamp through the warped windowpane and tried to imagine what Frownie felt. His consciousness straddled Prohibition, the Great Depression, Capone’s rise and fall, and the crime bosses that followed. Great-Granddad’s influence peaked during the tenure of Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson only to crumble with the rising Sicilian population of his Twentieth Ward domain. He was eventually kicked out of politics with—as the
Tribune
reported—“Scarface Al applying the boot.” Somewhere along the line, Frownie got to know Granddad, then my father, and finally me. How or why the relationship endured had never been revealed. But I knew some people made money while some went to prison. I also knew Frownie was right: I didn’t know shit.

About four
A.M.
, I took a walk down Halsted. The early August air was damp but pleasant. Produce trucks raced up and down the street, servicing the numerous bodegas and breakfast nooks preparing to open. The smattering of drunks, dope addicts, and whores gadding about were just part of the scenery. When I returned to my apartment, the sky was beginning to lighten.

My legs felt heavy on the stairway. I tilted the recliner back to its farthest position. I had foolishly thought uncovering the blackmailing of Linda Conway would break open the case. Instead I learned that greed and corruption were alive and well in Chicago city politics. Who knew being a lesbian was even frowned upon by anyone anymore? I drifted off thinking I’d wake up to discover the last ten days had all been a dream and Snooky was home dusting his collection of rain-forest bird statues hand-carved from tagua nuts. Once again, the phone woke me two hours later.

“I’m taking the morning off,” Audrey said. “Come with me to a gallery.”

“I’m trying to focus on the case.”

“Perfect! Come with me to take your mind off things awhile and that might help you see more clearly.”

I supposed she had a point.

* * *

Next door to Audrey’s shop, a thirty-something woman wearing a sequined lavender head scarf was on her knees in the display window of Vagabond Boutique, dressing a mannequin in a 1950s housedress. Beside her lay a large orange tabby cat. Our eyes met long enough to surpass my comfort level. I blinked. Her gaze followed me into Taudrey Tats, where Audrey waited to wrap her skinny arms around my torso. She squeezed tight with the side of her head plastered against my chest just under my chin. I squeezed back, and it felt good, though it seemed pretentious on her part.

I let up a bit, but she squeezed harder. Audrey manipulating her sexuality, leading me around by a ring through my nose. Pathetic.

“All right already,” I said and freed myself. “I’m a big boy.”

She studied me. “You got punched in the other eye?”

“Maybe.”

She shook her head. “Well, then, let’s go.”

I volunteered to drive, but she flagged down a cab. “It feels more urban-appropriate,” she said. I didn’t bother asking what that meant. She gave the driver an address on the northwest side.

“Where are you taking me?” I said.

“A gallery I stumbled on last year. I go every few months when there’s a new exhibit.” She described the artwork at The Eclectic Narcoleptic as typical of “extreme development fused with intellectual neo-expressionism.”

Audrey hummed an unidentifiable tune. I tried to relax, but my thoughts stuck to the case. In particular, Voss’s mysterious grudge. Did the Landaus piss off the Germans somehow? Or maybe it was the Greeks he hated, particularly Kalijero. Did he blame me for his inability to settle an old score with Kalijero? Why wouldn’t Kalijero tell me about this conflict? Maybe he didn’t know.

The taxi let us off in front of a converted firehouse in another brick-bungalow neighborhood. “The artist is H. R. Musick,” Audrey said as we walked into the sparsely populated engine bay. “His disparate pop-art characters interacting on photographed backgrounds create vignettes of absurd theater. It’s a brilliant demonstration of the subtext of real life.”

We looked at a picture of a child dressed in an old-fashioned sailor’s outfit sitting cross-legged on the back of a giant black swan as it floated across a pond. The child’s toy schooner floated next to them.

I felt compelled to ask, “That’s the
real life
you live in?”

Audrey responded with something about each picture having a million worlds and each world having a million stories and that truth was everything and nothing—or something equally bizarre. Then she recognized a woman across the room and ran over to her. I continued the tour seeing only the events of the previous ten days. Fear of not finding Snooky’s killer crept in. Angles, I thought. There had to be another angle. Snooky was family, but he wasn’t blood. If someone wanted Landau blood, why didn’t they kill me?

Audrey’s voice startled me. “What stories do you see?”

The painting in front of me depicted young girls, bunnies, a World War II fighter plane diving with guns spitting out orange flames, and a black bear. “I see Snooky lying on a pile of construction trash with two bullets in his head.” Audrey had no reaction. She started telling her own story about the picture’s characters. Tate killed Snooky, I thought, because he was perversely jealous of Snooky’s relationship with Audrey. Or maybe Tate
killed Snooky because he knew too much about Tate’s financial dealings. Both scenarios seemed improbable and had nothing to do with bad blood.

“Tell me what you’re thinking?”

I looked at Audrey. “I need a story of irrefutable evidence.”

We walked to the firehouse’s tower, a sixty-foot-tall structure used for drying hoses. At the top of the structure was the original 1912 bronze bell. “I’ll start spending more time with him,” Audrey said. “Maybe we can figure out who actually pulled the trigger.”

“Your life isn’t complicated enough? I mean, you’ve got real issues to deal with regarding your
dad
.”

“If
Dad
is a murderer, things become much less complicated.”

As soon as I attributed her unapologetic indifference to the world as part of a shallow, immature personality, she blindsided me with a simple observation that demonstrated intellectual depth and sensitivity. Add a generous sprinkling of sex appeal and you had a woman difficult to resist.

We shared a cab back to Taudrey Tats, where Audrey had planned to spend the afternoon preparing sketches for her wolf-mural client. Next door, the Boutique Lady remained in the display window, meticulously pinning all kinds of trinkets to a dress. From her knees, she looked up and stared at us while we said our goodbyes.

“Your gaudy neighbor likes to stare.”

Audrey turned and waved to Miss Boutique, who smiled and resumed decorating. “She thinks you’re in love with me.”

Audrey’s sudden relapse annoyed me. “The shock value of your blunt honesty is zero. In fact, it’s a real turnoff.”

Audrey stepped back and searched my face. “Okay,” she said and walked into her shop.

38

The Friday lunchtime crowd kept me circling the neighborhood longer than usual, and with each pass I noticed the black Cadillac limousine parked in the loading zone across from my apartment. No doubt it idled with the air-conditioning on. Eventually I found a space two blocks away and started walking. About half a block from my building, the limo bullied across both lanes of traffic and stopped in front of me on the wrong side of
the street. The passenger rear window lowered to reveal Mildish’s cherubic face. Undisturbed by the blaring horns and obscenities directed at his driver, Mildish said, “Could you give me a few minutes, Mr. Landau?”

Mildish pushed open the door. A frigid gust swept over me. My Honda could drive ten miles burning the gas used to create that arctic blast. Once I was inside, Mildish tapped on the glass partition. The tires squealed, throwing me against the door as the car swung around and merged back into traffic. “Sorry about that,” Mildish said. “I guess none of us is immune to the temptation of power.”

“Especially four hundred horsepower,” I said.

Mildish chuckled. “It’s time I tell you that Dr. Tate murdered Mr. Snook.”

When he didn’t elaborate, I said, “That settles it. I’ll call Area B headquarters and have a warrant issued for his arrest.”

I waited until Mildish said, “I made an executive decision—”

“You can’t prove it, but you’re going to throw Tate under the bus. Why?”

Mildish rubbed his chin and then his eyes and forehead. “To end this once and for all.” His voice had that unemotional edge of a professional assassin.

“You mean, to end my investigation once and for all.”

“It looks bad, I know. It was our fault. Tate was new to this, and we didn’t keep an eye on him. We should have anticipated his panic and stepped in. Surely you must know he acted on his own, and we had nothing whatever to do with your friend’s murder.”

“You want me to accept your executive decision as truth and leave it at that?”

“It’s just business.”

“And you think your business decision will exonerate you? If you don’t like being a suspect, then give me proof of your innocence or someone else’s guilt.”

I didn’t think it possible to sweat inside a refrigerator, but Mildish took out a handkerchief and started mopping his forehead as if he were sitting in the left field bleachers at Wrigley. “I will testify under oath—” Mildish started to breathe rapidly and rub his hands together. Then he frantically searched his jacket pockets and found a pill to place under his tongue. “Give me a few moments, please,” he said. I waited as His Honor’s head fell back and his fists pushed into the leather seats, apparently bracing himself against some unimaginable horror. A couple of minutes later, he sighed deeply and relaxed.

“I’ve never actually seen a panic attack, but that sure looked like one,” I said.

“We all have inner demons to battle,” Mildish said and leaned toward me just a bit. “It would be a mistake to interpret mine as a sign of weakness.”

I should’ve been scared or at least intimidated. Instead, I leaned toward His Honor and said, “Tell me again how you had nothing to do with those photos Tate used to blackmail Linda Conway.”

Mildish straightened himself. “Good god almighty—that was business! His efforts at persuasion were failing. He was showing signs of weakness, so we made a decision. In retrospect, we never should have brought Tate in. We could have used some other channels to get to the trustees. If we were going to kill someone, it would have made more sense to kill Tate than Mr. Snook. We trusted Mr. Snook. Tate was an amateur.”

“You tracked me down just to tell me of your executive decision?”

“I have been made aware that Dr. Tate’s past includes some shocking behavior. The kind of behavior that should ruin a man’s life.”

“Killing someone isn’t shocking enough?”

“This involves the abuse of a child.”

“What does this have to do with Snooky’s murder?”

“Dr. Tate murdered Charles Snook. Trust me on this decision.”

I struggled to quash my laughter. “I should trust you?”

“Tate will be told that he can either tell the truth about it or be exposed as a degenerate. In effect, this will end your investigation.”

I took a moment to digest his words. “You’re going to tell a man to confess to murder or be labeled a child molester? You are indeed the all-powerful Oz! What the hell kind of choice is that? Either way, he’s finished.”

“There’s nothing to be gained by putting off the inevitable. If a guilty man can’t be brought to justice, then bring the justice to him.”

“Your executive decision seems a bit irrational and desperate.”

Mildish groaned. “I had nothing to do with Mr. Snook’s murder. We hope you’ll be satisfied with our decision and let things return to normal. Of course, you’ll be well compensated for dropping the investigation.” Mildish tapped on the glass partition and the driver slowed at the next intersection before pulling a sharp U-turn.